All posts by Bill Shu

Bill is a 2B Math student triple majoring in Mathematical Economics, FARM (Financial Analysis and Risk Management), and Statistics. Bill is really passionate about both Economics and Finance, as he is particularly interested in macroeconomics, the history of economic thought and the forces behind financial markets.

The 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics was awarded to two American Economists, Paul Romer and William Nordhaus, for their work on economic growth theory and the economic impact of climate change, respectively. This article will attempt to scratch the surface of William Nordhaus’ breakthrough contribution to economic modelling of climate changes, or in the words of the prize committee, “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis.”

The 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics was definitely a “weird” one. One recipient was Dr. Eugene Fama from UChicago, who proposed the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH) (which contends that markets are efficient). Yet, on the other hand, professor Robert Shiller from Yale, a leading economist in Behavioural Finance (an area that explores how psychology engenders investors’ decisions to deviate from perfect rationality), also received the honor for his work in examining the irrationality of investors, among some of his other work [1].

Prospect Theory evaluates how individuals choose under risk and uncertainty, and aims to illustrate that sometimes choices are not optimal. This theory was first developed in 1979 by two psychologists, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, and a lot of behavioural economists later built on their work. In 2002, Professor Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in Behavioural Economics (unfortunately, professor Tversky already passed away in 1996, and the Nobel Prize doesn’t award posthumously).